Good evening.
I shall read poems in English translation, and some of them,
for sound sake, in the Hebrew original.
The translations have been made by various translators
as a good one Harold Schimmel and Ruth Nevo.
But the last two books became a kind of experiment
in translation.
I did it together with the British poet, Ted Hughes.
And I translated just straight, almost word by word,
and then he listened to the poem in Hebrew.
And, so, we worked together.
It was a very nice experiment, and I think it worked well.
I would like to start straight away
with a poem which may perhaps prove that poetry in my country
is very deeply involved and it's part of the community
and it's part of political life and it's part of history
and it's part of everything.
It's not limited to certain groups or campuses.
But it's right outside there.
And I think we are very lucky as poets in Israel to have
quite a big audience and much beyond the smallness
of the country and the small number of its people.
"A Song of Peace."
"My son smells of peace when I lean over him.
It isn't just the soap.
Everybody was once a child with a smell of peace.
And in the whole country, there isn't a single windmill
which turns or torn country like torn clothes, which
can't be mended and hard, lonely forefathers in [INAUDIBLE]
grave in childless silence.
My son smells of peace.
His mother's womb promised him that
which God can't promise us."